Hooray for the gardener!

Wow - Mrs Barham must have saved the day by getting the gardener to mow down the yucky weeds that were/are strangling parts of the potentially fabulous Peachgrove native bush gardens.
These latest pics show an elite band of keen eco-warriors who are keen to help look after the native gardens.

Wow - it's so lovely to see the plants again now that the weeds are mostly gone. Now tese kauri have a chance to grow up tall and strong like mighty Tane Mahuta.
I'm sure the rest is soon to follow. Once it is down to mulched up weeds and grass who will maintain it? Surely the Peachgrove students could. Many hands make light work.
Well done Mrs Barham.
:-)

Below: Head and shoulder height knightshades still to be dealt to...

Peachgrove Garden Travesty

Peachgrove Learnscapes committee and EnviroAgents spent years planning and fundraising to get an amazing native garden designed and planted around the otherwise empty back field. The gardens are something to be proud of and to nurture so they will live for many generations to come.
Sadly the school is neglecting the gardens and they are being over taken by noxious weeds such as knightshades and strangling vines. To my horror I found one corner was particularly bad and all the young kauri trees were almost dead from neglect. I fixed the problem in five minutes, so the story that no one has time to do it is rubbish. I think the school should be ashamed and should get organised to allow the students to weed their own patch and protect what is a wonderful example of something environmentally positive.
I know most of the staff have no interest in environmental issues [the exceptions being Mrs New and one or two others to my knowledge] but this garden should be something precious to Peachgrove and the loud negative voices should be silenced. At the very least the $40,000 [I think that's about right] investment should be saved.

Stand up Peachgrove and do the right thing!

The photos below show some before and after shots of two weed entangled kauri and an astelia. One struggling young kauri was even bent over to the ground!
These two thoughtful students gave their time willingly to rectify the problem. It's the staff who need to get on board. Maybe some of you keen young citizens should take a leadership role and make a positive difference.

Room5ian garden in spring

Well, I better go into the greenhouse today to check your seedlings.
Mine are not spouting at home becuase its too cold. I will take some to school to compare the results when placed in the greenhouse. It will be a kind of fair test as I have used the same seeds, same soil and seedraising mix. I'm trying to start a crop of really hot chillis and delicious old-fashioned [heirloom] tomatoes.
Have you seen Rosiegal's amazing Room5ian Garden Logo?
Here it is:

See if you can match it. Let's make it a competition. The winner gets used as our class garden logo. Maybe the newspaper might publish a wee story about us and use the winning image...

Worm Farm

Tomorrow we will go to the greenhouse area to re-do the worm farm and check out the compost area. Bring your raincoats. Gumboots could be good. Who is keen?
Post info on your own blog about these topics if you want to be included.
Have fun and see you tomorrow!

soil, mulch, compost, worms, dirt!!

YUM YUM! Composting is fun. It's also important for sustainability, good for your garden and really quite satisfying.

Its not as easy as just dumping kitchen and garden waste in a bin though. It is a science! Anyone interested in being a soil maker? Rich fertile soil makes for productive gardens.

Follow the links to find resources about this topic:

http://www.reducerubbish.govt.nz/compost/index.html

http://www.reducerubbish.govt.nz/compost/mulching-101.html

http://www.reducerubbish.govt.nz/compost/composting-101.html

DID YOU KNOW?
If you're filling one wheelie bin of rubbish a week, you could be throwing away enough garden rubbish and kitchen scraps to make one and a half trailer loads of compost a year.

Our Breathing Space

we can breathe. We can go out in the Sun with out getting fried. We can watch life evolving all around us.
How do we do this when we are on a lump of rock hurtling through space?
We have an atmosphere. Let's find out a little more about it...

questions:

1. how come we have air to breathe?
2. why doesn't the sun fry us?
3. why does our air stay around us instead of flying out into the vacuum of space?
4. why does the air temperature change and how come we aren't frozen like we would be if we left the Earth without a spaceship?
5. where does the ozone layer exist? what is it? how does it help us? is there a hole in it? how did that happen? is it our fault?
6. do we humans have an effect on our atmosphere?
7. what is the greenhouse effect? can we replicate that in class somehow as an experiment?
8. do you like growing tomatoes or chillis or beans?

[I'm hoping you will add todays questions to this post]

here are sone links to investigate:

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/overview.html

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/earth/atmosphere.html

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/space/atmosphere.html

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/layers.html

http://www.cosmos4kids.com/files/solsyst_earth.html

take this quiz when you've done some research... or take it first to find out what you don't know ...

http://www.geography4kids.com/extras/quiz_atmintro/index.html